Under the Weather: To the moon!

Sep. 5, 2013

Tropical Storm Gabrielle formed near Puerto Rico Wednesday night. The storm, which is poorly organized, is not expected to be a threat to the U.S. mainland, and currently shows no signs of strengthening into a hurricane. / National Hurricane Center

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A cold front, barely there, moved across Richland County Thursday morning, giving at least the appearance on occasion that it was going to rain.

No such luck. The front has passed through dry, with its associated clouds expected to quickly scatter out during the afternoon. As a result of the passage, temperatures today aren’t expected to do much better than the low 70s for highs.

Overnight Thursday into Friday morning, however, it will get quite chilly. Mansfield’s forecast low temperature is 45, but the coldest locales out in the county could see temps in the upper 30s for the first time since early June.

Some parts of Pennsylvania, such as Bradford in the Alleghenies, could very easily see a frost on Friday morning. Upstate New York could get frosty as well.

The chill will be short-lived, with temperatures gradually moderating to highs of perhaps 80 degrees by Saturday. Although another cold front is forecast to move through our area Saturday night, chances of rain associated with it are again next to nothing.

The highest temperature currently in our forecast is 84 degrees on Tuesday, with quiet conditions likely to persist for at least the next seven days. Long-range outlooks have normal to perhaps above-normal temps creeping back into Ohio from the west by the middle of the month.

At 11:27 p.m. Friday NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, spacecraft is scheduled to take off for the moon from Wallops Island, Va.

The small, car-sized robotic craft has been charged with gathering information about the structure and composition of the lunar atmosphere. Yes, the moon does have an atmosphere, barely.

The LADEE craft will also descend to study dust conditions near the surface of the moon.

Below are the weather statistics for Wednesday, Sept. 4, at my location 4 miles north-northwest of Fredericktown, Ohio: